Methodological options in the study of variable phenomena related to the first-person in the plural speech

Abstract

This paper presents methodology for an integrated treatment of three variable phenomena in Brazilian portuguese: (i) encoding of first-person plural into the forms nós (we) and a gente (the people), (ii) verbal agreement with the pronoun nós and (iii) verbal agreement with the pronominal form a gente. Based on the theoretical framework provided by Labovian sociolinguistics (LABOV, 1966, 1972), the methodology is applied to a sample of Brazilian portuguese spoken in the countryside of São Paulo State (GONÇALVES, 2007). The results indicate that distinct factors predominate in the choice of the alternative forms of each phenomenon: in the verbal agreement with a gente, linguistic factors are the most prominent; in the verbal agreement with nós, social factors are the most salient; and in the use of nós/a gente both linguistic and social factors prevail.

Keywords

• concordância verbal, primeira pessoa, nós, a gente.